Biking Mumbai, India

Honk Honk, Briiing Briiing (Look Out!) Make Way for the Bike Riders

Think you have traffic to contend with? Try riding in Mumbai, India, where the roads are gridlocked with rickshaws, mopeds, smoke-spewing buses and four-ton elephants--and that's before rush hour. Follow along as Mary Roach discovers the true meaning of "share the road."

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Fizzy Suresh is an oddity in Mumbai—a woman who chooses to travel by bike. (Courtesy of Mary Roach)

"Actually, I enjoy cycling." He tells us about an 18-kilometer ride he took. Suresh invites him to join Saturday's Critical Mass (CM) ride, which ends up at a park within walking distance of his home. A city official riding in a Critical Mass isn't as unlikely as it sounds. CM Mumbai—at least the day I rode—is less disruptive than it has been in many US cities. Thirty or so riders pedaled in single file, waiting at traffic lights, following rules. The CM Mumbai goal is slightly different than in other cities: to raise awareness for bicycles as an acceptable mode of transport for the middle class—and to erode the stigma of poverty surrounding bikes.

Kawathkar pushes back his chair and stands to shake Suresh's hand. "I can't give a guarantee to you, but mostly I will try to come."

We are handed over to Iftekhar Ansari, the man who designed the Banda Kurla Complex Cycle Track. In the months that followed its debut, Mumbai newspapers delighted in running photographs of cars parked inside it. A friend of Suresh's, a writer named Rakesh, described street dogs napping and weeds so thick "you have to go with a sword and cut your way through." Ansari is going to take us outside to see it. I study his face for signs of dread, pride, sheepishness, anything. I detect nothing, just a mild resemblance to Javier Bardem. (When I type up my notes, autocorrect gives me "boredom in slacks," which is perhaps an even more accurate description.)

There are no cars or dogs or shrubs in the stretch of cycle track Ansari brings us to. But also, it must be said, no bicyclists. Ansari allows that for the moment, most of the users are exercising—with or without bicycles—not everyday riders. He says the initial 13 kilometers represent a pilot project, and that proposed extensions will connect the paths to railway stations. He shades his eyes to watch a figure ­several blocks distant. It's a bicycle! He looks pleased, but less so as the distance closes. The man is riding outside the bike lane.

From the perspective of the cyclist, Mumbai traffic can move with a surprising, almost balletic fluidity. For long stretches of road, everyone—cars, bicycles, autorickshaws, motorbikes—moves at the same 15 miles per hour. Suresh and I are on our way back from MMRDA. It's four in the afternoon. We—everyone—flow like cells in some gritty metal bloodstream. You go, and just keep going. You make for the closest opening, no matter how small. That's what everyone is expecting you to do. To stop or slow and wait for a larger gap is how, as a bicyclist, to annoy a Mumbai driver.

Also potentially annoying: a dedicated lane for bicyclists, such that they alone could speed along unhindered. Besides, it wouldn't be dedicated for long. "Straightaway, the motorbikes are going to take it," says Bhowmik. "If you are asking for bike lanes in Bombay, you have to be the most naive person ever."

We weave among the vehicles and pedestrians,­ snaking through openings barely wider than our handlebars. Oddly, I feel no fear. It's a bald contrast to my first few minutes on the road earlier today, when I rode with shoulders hunched, bracing for impact, angry horns, screaming motorists. None of which materialized. We're inches from the vehicles beside and in front of us, swerving into gaps without ever signaling, but never does it feel confrontational.

How can this be so? For one thing, everyone's doing it. If you're not nosing into an opening in front of someone, someone's ­nosing in front of you. That hyperalert order and decorum that emerge in the United States when traffic lights fail is, in Mumbai,­ a sort of baseline state. There's a benevolent democracy at the core of the mayhem, or maybe just a shared resignation. "We're very forgiving," says Suresh, when I mention this. "We're all born in this chaos."